Denver Broncos Trade for Joe Flacco

In a move that some fans find crazy, the Denver Broncos have traded for Joe Flacco. The Broncos have been struggling since Peyton Manning retired to find a legitimate quarterback to take over the offense. Since 2015 when the Broncos won the Super Bowl and Manning retired, the Broncos slowly started to decline. They went 9-7 in 2016 under Trevor Siemian and Paxton Lynch, 5-11 in 2017 under Paxton Lynch, and 6-10 in 2018 under Case Keenum. These seasons , with the exception of the 2018 season, were all bad on behalf of the lack of offensive firepower even with elite defenses. In 2016 the Broncos had the fourth highest ranked defense, and in 2017 they had the third highest ranked defense.

For the Broncos to add an experienced quarterback like Joe Flacco, who has an impressive resume including a Super Bowl win in which he took home Super Bowl MVP, was a smart move. Joe Flacco is 96-67 in career wins, and 10-5 in the playoffs, including a Super Bowl trophy. He averages 3,665 passing yards and 20.7 passing touchdowns to only 13.1 interceptions in seasons where he played all sixteen games. His overall passer rating is 84.1 and sits 22nd on the all time passing yards list with 38,245. Joe Flacco is an underrated fit that the Broncos desperately needed.

With the Broncos now having a solid quarterback they can put their struggles at offense behind them. The only problem is that this quarterback solution may have come a day late and a dollar short. The Broncos defense, shown last season, is a shell of what it used to be. The Broncos will now have to focus on building back a Super Bowl caliber defense to prevent teams from putting up 21.8 points a game. With a mediocre run game behind Phillip Lindsay, landing at 19th overall for the 2018 season, and Joe Flacco’s average of 1.3 touchdowns per game, the defense would need to step up big time in order to be a successful team.

The Broncos were wise to add a solid quarterback to their team, but they may have been too late in doing so. The Broncos have needed a quarterback since 2016 to give their elite defense something to fight for. However, despite such a solid defense, the defense alone could not win games behind an offense that failed to score. Now the defense is in a decline and building back the offense seems like a hopeless endeavor. The Broncos should tank at this point to draft solid pieces to their defense, and wait for a younger quarterback with some experience to take over for Flacco when the time comes, which will be soon, for him to retire. Who knows, maybe one day Jameis Winston could be leading this franchise.

About James Wanner

I am a junior in college currently studying criminal justice, my dream is to be an NFL analyst. I'm huge into football and I can watch it all day. My team is the Dallas Cowboys. Another sport I'm into is basketball.